Creation

A quick-fire response to Diana’s May photo prompt. Steam punk isn’t my thing, so this is a first for me, and it isn’t even a story…

Pixabay image by Brigitte Werner

The world whispered and sighed to the sound of wheels turning, valves hissing and the soft clicking of gears. Horse hooves beat time, and the pistons of steam engines rattled louder than anything but thunder. Cities had risen and spread in a regular, ordered fashion and society acquiesced to a hierarchy that never changed. The secret lay in the great clock that ticked at the heart of the earth.

Time had ticked since the methodical unfurling of the first fern and the faint throb of bioluminescent proto-fish in the ocean depths. It ticked soft and gentle for millennia and millennia, regular and unfailing. Bird throats chirruped steadily; clip-clopping and pattering animals stepped in time to the universal dance…